"I am very upset about the progress of soccer in the United States. The people in the pro circuit haven't shown enough interest in the American player," complained Shep Messing. That was six years ago, before the Bronx-born, Harvard-educated goalie became famous for eating glass, keeping a pet boa constrictor, posing nude for a Viva centerfold and playing on last year's championship New York Cosmos soccer team. Messing, 28, is no longer upset, having just signed a $100,000 per-year contract with the fledgling Oakland Stompers, making him the highest-paid American soccer player in history. "I didn't start playing soccer until I was 18," says Shep. "I hope my new contract will be an incentive for American players."

Fugitive Financier Robert Vesco has been facing some rough weather in the sunny Caribbean. Charged with embezzling $224 million from the now defunct I.O.S. Ltd. mutual fund empire, Vesco fled from the U.S. to Costa Rica in 1972. He is now ensconced as a gentleman farmer on a 4,000-acre country estate with his wife and children. Threatened with deportation once Costa Rica's President-elect, Rodrigo Carazo, takes office in May, Vesco applied for citizenship, listing his nationality as Italian (he was born in Detroit but claimed the nationality of his father). Trouble is, Italy and Costa Rica never bothered to sign a peace treaty after World War II and, according to Costa Rica's Attorney General's office, are still technically at war. Vesco is therefore an "enemy alien" and ineligible for citizenship. Vesco insists he is not worried. "There are many countries that have asked me, that have let me know they would receive me," he says. "Except for the United States, the country doesn't matter."

Fans of TV's All in the Family might remember what happened a few seasons back when Edith Bunker sent Archie's favorite chair out for reupholstering. Some modern artist spirited away the old seat, labeled it "A Genuine American Gothic" and put it on sale for $2,000. Now life has imitated TV art, and Archie's chair, along with Edith's, is headed for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Last week during a break in the show's taping, Producer Norman Lear presented the chairs to Carl Scheele, curator of the Smithsonian's Community Life Division collections. The two seats will be preserved as "part of the cultural legacy of our country," according to John Brademas, member of a House subcommittee that oversees the Smithsonian. As for the Bunkers, Hollywood craftsmen are now constructing replica chairs for their upcoming final TV season.

For a lame-duck Governor, New Mexico's Jerry Apodaca looks suspiciously like a healthy road runner. Apodaca, 43, has spent the past six weeks chugging through the hills [ near the executive mansion, trying to get in shape for the Boston Marathon on April 17. "Monday through Friday I run eight miles a day and on the weekend I do ten miles a day--except when I'm getting tired," says the Governor, a veteran jogger and former running back at the University of New Mexico. Apodaca's longest previous race was a 13-miler in 1974. He is now trying to slim down from his current 172 lbs. because "I don't want to carry that much around for 26 miles." Not even Governors, apparently, carry extra weight in a marathon.

The Ali-Spinks bout was "the best fight I've seen in years," proclaimed former Heavyweight Champ Joe Louis, 63. "The young man really gave it to Ali in the 15th round. What a 15th round!" Louis watched the set-to while recovering from a fight of his own. In October he underwent thoracic surgery to repair a ballooned aorta, and after five months in a Houston hospital he is now convalescing at his modest Las Vegas home. Louis, who had been an official greeter at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas before his operation, insists he is "impatient to return to work." For now, the Brown Bomber is consigned to a wheelchair and two rounds of physical therapy each day.

No, the band didn't play Short People when Jockey Willie Shoemaker, 46, was married for the third time, at the home of his new in-laws in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Calif. After all, the bride, 28-year-old Realtor Cynthia Barnes, is a full 5 ft., 91/2 in., while her new mate is 4 ft., 11 in. The couple have known each other for eight years, and Shoemaker has watched her ride hunters and jumpers. "She's got a better seat than I do," he says admiringly. He also admits that "she's a lot prettier on a horse than I am." But not as much in demand at the tracks. The couple will forgo a honeymoon until the current racing season is over.

"Art is too expensive for most people today," says one man who should know. Nelson Rockefeller, 69, started collecting while honeymooning abroad in 1930. Today he owns 10,000 pieces worth an estimated $33.6 million. Last week he announced plans to share his acquisitions with the public --via an annual catalogue of reproductions and a five-book art series to be published by Alfred A. Knopf. Inc. The first book, with about 250 photographs of Rockefeller's collection of primitive art, will appear this fall. Rocky, who has been tending to his family's financial interests and traveling since his retirement from politics two years ago, wrote an introduction to it, and also plans a personal memoir called The Art of Collecting. Many of his finer works will end up in museums, he says, since "with prices what they are and the heavy tax laws, you can no longer afford to leave them to your heirs."

In one of his first cost-cutting moves, Jimmy Carter put the kibosh on all those Government-financed portraits that hang in the halls of Washington. They just weren't the sort of thing taxpayers should spend money on, said Jimmy. Last week the Commerce Department unveiled its answer to the President: a life-size painting of Elliot Richardson, done by the former Commerce Secretary himself. An inveterate doodler, Richardson, who also served as Attorney General in the Richard Nixon administration until the infamous Saturday Night Massacre, loaded his self-portrait with symbolism. He is painted into a corner, Richardson pointed out, but signal flags in the background impart the message: "I expect to refloat." Tiny sperm whales on his blue necktie recall the adage, "The spouting whale gets harpooned." Quipped Richardson of his canvas: "You may ask yourself, 'Why not the best?' The answer, of course, is that it's too expensive."

On the Record

Petey Greene, ex-convict who is now host of a Washington TV talk show, on being invited to a White House dinner for Yugoslav President Tito: "Truly, it was very nice. I even stole a spoon."

Daniel Berrigan, radical Jesuit priest, on the declining state of civil disobedience: "When we get locked up now, there's a sigh of ennui."

Midge Decter, author and journalist, on our "massive national hypochondria. We think of nothing so much as what we put into our mouths."

Carl Stokes, former mayor of Cleveland and now a newscaster for WNBC-TV, welcoming ex-New York Mayor Abe Beame to the staff as an urban affairs consultant: "I hope the station hasn't become the employer of last resort for ex-mayors."

Eric F. Goldman, Princeton University historian, on the impact of the 1960s: "This period was a watershed as important as the American Revolution or the Civil War in causing changes in the U.S."

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